Top Secret Part 40

Four minutes later-it seemed longer than that-Major McClung boomed again from the backseat: "Cronley, go up there and see what the h.e.l.l's going on."

"Yes, sir."

When Cronley walked to the nose of the Packard, there were now six men in black-dyed fatigues and a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lieutenant in woolen ODs standing in front of the barrier. Plus General Greene, Colonel Mattingly, and Lieutenant Colonel Frade.

"Absolutely no one, Captain Cronley," Frade said with amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice, "gets into the Pullach compound without the specific permission of the Engineer major in charge of this project. He is at supper and has been sent for."

"On one hand," Mattingly said, "I have to say I'm impressed with the security but-"

"On the other hand," General Greene interrupted him, "I'm getting more than a little annoyed standing here in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned road waiting for this G.o.dd.a.m.ned major."

"You understand, Lieutenant," Cronley asked, "that this is a highly cla.s.sified project being built for the Counterintelligence Corps?"

"We have been instructed not to get into that, sir," the lieutenant said.

Cronley produced his CIC credentials.

The Engineer officer, who looked to be about as old as Cronley, was clearly dazzled.

"I can vouch for these officers," Cronley said. "Move the roadblock out of the way."

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said, and signaled for the men in the dyed-black uniforms to do so.

"I'm starting to like you, Cronley," General Greene said.

"When the major comes, sir, what do I tell him?" the lieutenant asked.

"Tell him to find us and be prepared to explain to me why this project is not yet finished," General Greene said.

"Yes, sir."

"Let's get this show on the road," General Greene ordered.

Everyone got back into the cars and they drove past the roadblock.

[ SIX ].

Two hundred yards down the road they were stopped at another roadblock manned by carbine-armed men wearing dyed-black U.S. Army fatigues.

"Go see," Major Iron Lung McClung bellowed from the backseat.

As Cronley walked to the old Packard limousine he sensed that McClung had also gotten out of the Kapitn and was walking behind him.

And as they reached the Packard, a jeep came racing toward the barrier.

A lieutenant colonel and a major, both in fatigues, jumped out of the jeep and approached the Packard as General Greene, Colonel Mattingly, and Lieutenant Colonel Frade emerged.

The lieutenant colonel saluted.

"Lieutenant Colonel Bristol, General. There was no heads-up that you were coming, sir."

"They call that 'conducting an unscheduled inspection,' Colonel," General Greene said. "It has been my experience that you often learn a great deal during unscheduled inspections."

"Yes, sir. General, if you'd like to come with me to the headquarters building, there's a plat, a map, of the compound. I could explain what we're up to."

"Let's have a look at it. Lead the way, Colonel."

They got back in their cars and followed the Engineers' jeep past another roadblock and to a large two-story, freshly painted villa in the center of the village.

A large, also freshly painted, sign was mounted on the impressive building that was the General Offices of the South German Industrial Development Organization. It read: GENERAL-BROS SD-DEUTSCHE INDUSTRIELLE ENTWICKLUNGSORGANISATION - What Cronley was seeing now was so distinctly different from what he remembered of "the Pullach compound" that he actually wondered if they were in the same place.

When he had first gone to Kloster Grnau, Dunwiddie had taken him on a fifteen-minute tour of what was to be, he said, "our new home away from home." Then they had seen no more than a dozen Engineer troops under a sergeant erecting a crude basic fence-barbed wire nailed to two-by-fours-around a block in the center of the village.

Now, that simple fence was gone. In its place were three far more substantial barriers. One was where the simple fence had been, around the center of the village. A second encircled the entire village, and a third was two hundred yards outside that. They had all been constructed of chain-link fencing suspended between ten-foot-tall concrete poles. Concertina barbed wire had been strung both along its top and on the ground.

All of the fences had signs mounted at ten-yard intervals that were stenciled with SD-DEUTSCHE INDUSTRIELLE ENTWICKLUNGSORGANISATION and, under that, in large red lettering, ZUTRITT VERBOTEN!

When everyone went into the building, they found that an eight-by-four-foot sheet of plywood on a tripod had been erected in the foyer. On it was a map of the compound.

"This is not what I expected," General Greene said after taking a quick look. "There's more here than I thought there would be."

Mattingly spoke up: "There's something, General, that I guess I should have told you about sooner."

"Which is?" Greene said not very pleasantly.

"General Clay sent for me just before I went back to Was.h.i.+ngton," Mattingly explained. "When I reported to him, he told me, in confidence, that as of January first, 1946, he was going to be relieved as Eisenhower's deputy and appointed military governor of the American Zone of Occupied Germany.

"Then he said he was sure that I would understand that as military governor he didn't want the Russians-he said 'our esteemed allies the Soviets'-coming to him with some wild accusation that we were hiding n.a.z.is in a monastery in Bavaria. He said that I would also understand that as military governor he would be very interested in German industrial development.

"General Clay then asked me why I still had a reinforced company of Second Armored Division soldiers guarding 'G.o.d only knew what' in my monastery and why the compound at Pullach, which was being built for the South German Industrial Development Organization, wasn't finished.

"At this point I decided that someone had made General Clay privy to Operation Ost. I told him the reason the South German Industrial Development Organization was not up and running in Pullach was because the Engineer battalion a.s.signed to Munich Military Post had other projects that were apparently more important than the Pullach compound. I told General Clay I had been reluctant to press the issue because, if I did, Munich Military Post would ask questions about the South German Industrial Development Organization I would not want to answer.

"General Clay then reached for his telephone and asked to be connected with the commanding officer of Munich Military Post. When he came on the line, General Clay said it had come to his attention that the Pullach project was running a little behind schedule and he had been wondering why.

"The post commander apparently replied to the effect that the Pullach compound project was lower on his list of priorities than a gymnasium and a Special Services library that the Engineers were building.

"General Clay replied-and this is just about verbatim-'Screw your G.o.dd.a.m.ned gymnasium and your G.o.dd.a.m.ned library. Get a G.o.dd.a.m.ned Engineer battalion over to Pullach today and get that G.o.dd.a.m.ned compound built yesterday.'"

"Ouch," General Greene said.

"General Clay then concluded the conversation by saying something to the effect that 'the next time the deputy commander of European Command tells you he wants something built, it would behoove you to build it immediately, rather than when you can conveniently fit it into your schedule.'"

"Ouch, again," General Greene said.

Mattingly turned to Bristol. "Colonel, can you pick up this narrative?"

"Yes, sir. I was at the gymnasium site when the post commander showed up and relayed General Clay's orders to me. I said, 'Yes, sir. I'll go out there first thing in the morning.'

"He said, 'You will go out there now, Colonel. And I suggest you take a cot and a sleeping bag with you, because you're not going to leave that site until the project is completed.' I called my wife, told her I would be out of town for a few days, went by my office and picked up the plans-your plans, I believe, Colonel . . . ?"

Mattingly nodded.

". . . and came out here with a handful of my people. By the time we got here, it was too dark to do much of anything but set up the cots, although I did call my headquarters and told them to start moving equipment out here. Then I went to bed.

"I got up at first light and walked around the area, making up my mind what had to be done and when. Then a puddle jumper flew over, twice, and landed on that road out there." He pointed. "I went out to ask the pilot what the h.e.l.l he thought he was doing.

"General Clay got out of the L-4, greeted me cheerfully, and said he hoped I had coffee and a couple of doughnuts, as he hadn't had any breakfast. As we walked here, he said, 'One of the first things you're going to have to do is extend that runway. My pilot wasn't sure he could land on it.'

"I said, 'Sir, that isn't a runway.'

"'It will be,' he said. 'And I have a few other little changes to make to Colonel Mattingly's plans for this place.' It took him about an hour. I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that he was Corps of Engineers-you don't think of general officers as having a branch of service-but he quickly showed he was one h.e.l.l of an engineer. Anyway, he said, 'Get me a sheet of plywood. We'll use it as a plat.'

"And then he sketched the village, freehand, on this"-he pointed to the sheet of plywood-"with a grease pencil, and showed me where he wanted the fences to be, the barracks for the American guards, and the tent city for the Poles . . . the Polish."

"Those men in the dyed fatigues?" General Greene asked.

"Yes, sir. They're former Polish soldiers. They'd been German POWs. He said they didn't want to go home because the Russians were now running Poland, so Ike had decided he wasn't going to make them go home. He said they'd make good guards around our installations and to put them to work. General Clay said if you wanted to keep them on, after the compound is open, we could start building barracks for them."

"Start building, Colonel," Mattingly said. He turned to Cronley. "What do you think, Cronley?"

"I'm like you, Colonel. I didn't expect anything like this."

"Well, I suggest you'd better get used to it. It looks to me as if this place is just about ready for you to move into it, and that's what you're going to do, the minute it's ready."

"I'd estimate a week, sir, to complete everything," Colonel Bristol said.

"Colonel," Major McClung said, "have you been told we're going to put an ASA listening station in here?"

"No," Bristol said simply.

"Well, we are," General Greene said. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"I don't know what that will entail, sir."

McClung said, "A building . . ."

"That should be no problem."

". . . and an antenna farm near the building."

"I'm back, Major, to I don't know what that will entail."

"Why don't you come back and show him in the morning, McClung?" General Greene ordered. "My stomach is growling and I've already seen what I came to see."

[ SEVEN ].

The Main Dining Room Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Maximilianstra.s.se 178 Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany 2215 2 November 1945 Rachel had teased him to erection on the drive back to Munich, but had then withdrawn her hand.

When they reached the hotel, Cronley decided that was the last he would see of her tonight-and for a while. It already was late and after dinner everyone would retire, the Schumanns together. And after he flew Clete to Frankfurt first thing in the morning, he would fly back to Kloster Grnau, not to Munich.

She was now sitting across from him in the alcove off the main dining room, but her foot was out of range of his ankle.

She's lucky her husband doesn't show any signs of even suspecting what she was doing to me in the front seat. Correction. I'm lucky . . . we're both d.a.m.ned lucky.

- "I want to say this while everyone's here," Frade announced as they were having their dessert. "I've decided to send my deputy, Major Max Ashton, over here to a.s.sume command of this end of Operation Ost . . ."

s.h.i.+t, Cronley thought. So I am being relieved.

And I had just about decided my half turning of Orlovsky had kept me my job.

". . . Not only is the Pullach compound too much for one man to handle, but those Pentagon types-Lieutenant Colonel Parsons and Major Ashley-who are going to be at Pullach for General Magruder worry me.

"As most of us saw, they are very much aware they outrank Captain Cronley. What I'm going to do as we're flying back to Was.h.i.+ngton is try to convince General Magruder that Colonel Parsons would be much more valuable sitting at his Pentagon desk than he would be here. If he doesn't agree-and I don't think he will, as it's pretty clear to me that they are very much interested in having Army G-2 take over Operation Ost-then I'm going to go to Admiral Souers and tell him what I'm thinking. I'll probably lose that battle as the admiral doesn't need one more fight with the Pentagon. In other words, over my objections, Parsons will probably show up at Pullach.

"If that happens, Colonel Mattingly, I would appreciate it if you would whisper in Parson's ear that while he might outrank Major Ashton, he doesn't outrank you."

"Consider it done," Mattingly said, smiling.

"Now, as far as who runs Pullach: Cronley dealt with a serious problem out there in the last few days to the complete satisfaction of Colonel Mattingly, General Gehlen, and me."

To Mattingly's complete satisfaction? That's hard to believe.

"What sort of a problem? May I ask?" Colonel Schumann asked.

"You may ask, Colonel, but Colonel Mattingly and I have decided the fewer people who know about it, the better. I'm sure you'll understand. The point is Cronley has established a close rapport with General Gehlen that I found at first hard to believe. But it's real, and I am not going to endanger it by telling Gehlen that Major Ashton will now be running things.

"So Cronley will run General Gehlen, so to speak, answering only to me. And Major Ashton will run everything else, answering to both Colonel Mattingly and me.

"I'm well aware this command structure would look very odd on a Table of Organization, but that's the way it's going to be." He paused and smiled. "As they told me on my very first day in the Marine Corps, 'If you don't like the way things are run around here, learn to.'"

When that got the chuckles Frade expected, he stood up.